Olivia Dial
ED 610
April 10, 2014
Article Review/Reflection
As a recent graduate from Linfield College, I decided to focus on pre-service teachers’
outlooks on computers. Each of the articles is from a very different time period in the
technological sense, one from 2002 and the other from 2008. With this disparity in technology
and my personal experience from my teacher education program, I compare how each of these
studies view computers in education. Pre-service teachers of the 21st century are required to learn
a breadth of knowledge; not only are they expected to focus on the content and cognitive
development of children, but they must develop the skills and knowledge required to implement
learning technologies. Beginning with the oldest article that is incorporated, we will notice how
the perception and inclusion of computers in classrooms rapidly changes.
Jones (2002) first asserts that during this time, computers have been used in schools for
more than twenty years. During this time period, a study demonstrated that only 20% of teachers
felt prepared to use computers, while another 70% felt reluctant (Jones, 2002, p. 8). This
somewhat recent wave of technology forced colleges to require graduate schools to teach preservice students about the uses of technology in the classroom. Their primary goal was to address
the minimum skills required to effectively use computers in the classroom. A result from this
article’s study found that self-efficacy with computers determines whether a student teacher will
teach with computers later on. Although a pre-service teacher possesses a positive attitude
towards using technology in a classroom, a correlation with their ability to apply it in classroom
was not found (Jones, 2002). Reports claim that this could be due to the decontextualized nature:
meaningful links between what occurs in a university lecture about computers in education and
the reality of managing computers in their own classrooms did not exist.
When we fast forward six years, many changes are observed in the world of technology.
Still, teachers’ attitudes directly relate to computer use in the classroom; however, computers
appear more in the classroom, but more specifically for housekeeping tasks and parent
communication. Pre-service teachers, still almost exclusively in graduate schools, but more in
undergraduate studies, are equipped with training for useful and regular computer activities, e.g.,
instruction, research, and problem solving. More importantly, Teo (2008) again found a
correlation between greater computer use and computer confidence. His study showed that preservice teachers showed positive attitudes toward computers (p. 415), much higher than the 20%
that felt comfortable with computers in 2002. However, this is likely due to the higher
availability to computers in education during this time.
Looking father into the future, in 2013, my teacher education program required
experience with computers throughout all of our undergraduate, major classes. Opportunities to
work with SMART Boards, Document Cameras, and a myriad of programs such as Word,
Powerpoint, Prezi, Google docs, wikis, and blogs, technology was not taught in its own
environment, but throughout our education program. In our final seminar class, we had to reflect
on how we used technology in the classrooms that we student taught in. Through the certification
of the education program, Linfield was required to add an additional assignment relaying the
technology standards to students and how Linfield’s pre-service teachers fulfilled them. Unlike
the decontextualized environment present in 2002 and even in 2008, technology surrounded us.
It was applicable across all subject and the opportunities we were given to apply them in the
classroom were numerous.
References
Jones, A. (2002, July). Refusing or ignoring? An investigation of student teachers' perceptions
and use of computers. Australian Society for Educational Technology, p. 7-10.
Teo, T. (2008). Pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards computer use: A Singapore survey.
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 24(4), 413-424